The firefighter

For Regional 1 CFS commander Russell Grear, the morning began more methodically as he began to plan for what the latest forecasts revealed would be a hot and gusty day with a late change.

Tasked to fly with a helicopter pilot over the Adelaide Hills and Mount Lofty Ranges, the pair left observation and coordination duties with several teams fighting a fire near Eagle on the Hill when they travelled northwards towards Tea Tree Gully and the full scale of the fires were revealed.

"There was one fire front that I reckon was 10 kilometres long, and there wasn't a soul to be seen in relation to firefighting or anything else," he recalled.

Soon after the team were forced to land, as the dust storm and smoke from the changing weather became too dense to fly in.

People had tried to do what they could to save their houses, but it was just moving too fast."

The following day Russell was assigned to the Cleland and Green Hill areas clean up of the Mount Lofty Ranges, and he saw firsthand the damage caused from the wild fire.

He walked through the wastelands of scorched earth and remains, surrounded by exhausted firefighters and homeowners in shock, attempting to locate recognisable pieces of their lives from the day before amongst the charred shells of their homes.

"The worst aspect of bushfires is when it causes death to people and when it burns down people's houses," Russell said.

Watching the people stand amongst the ruins, lost, searching for a skerrick of their lives that once were is an image that has never left him.

"People put a lot of work into their own house, and when it all goes up in smoke and there is nothing to save, it is frustrating watching the owners come to grips with that disaster."

Fires in the South East

The south-eastern corner of South Australia was another area heavily hit by the Ash Wednesday fires.

Chairman of the SA Volunteer Fire Fighters Museum of Naracoorte, Rex Hall, said records he had reviewed from the devastating 1939 fires in the area showed similar conditions were experienced in 1983.

At around 3:30pm on the afternoon of the fires the gale forced NW winds stopped, conditions were dead calm, then extreme winds came from the SW and turned the flanks of previous fires into uncontrollable fronts.

Three fires merged into one massive line of flames.

In the South East a total of 14 lives were lost, 150,000 hectares of farmland and 20,000 hectares of forests destroyed, 96 homes and 350 farm razed and approximately 300,000 sheep and 10,000 cattle killed in the fires.

"I pray that weather conditions and events beyond our control don't provide a repeat of these fires in the future, however I fear it is not a matter of if but when," Rex Hall said.